Rajasthan: India s desert state to go for polls tomorrow

Rajasthan, the land of deserts, is all geared up for Friday s poll to the 199 assembly seats out of 200 with a major battle in show between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress.The tug of war with a total of 2, 274 candidates in the fray will begin at 8 am and continue till 5 pm. Elections will take place at 51,667 polling stations where 4,74,79,402 people are eligible to cast vote. Alwar constituency polling has been countermanded following the death of a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate.The fight is to win a target of at least 101 seats to achieve majority mark in the intense polling between the two national parties. In 2013 assembly elections, BJP won the mandate with 163 seats while Congress was reduced to 21 seats. Contrast it to 2008 elections, when the Congress won 96 seats, a gain of 40 seats over 2003 polls and the BJP plummeted to 78, down by 42 seats from the previous assembly polls.This year, Vasundhara Raje, the state s incumbent chief minister, is facing a ...